Episode 8: “Dawn of the Speds”

Scene 1 - Briefing room. The lights are dimmed and the crew are filing in like zombies, still wearing their pajamas.

Greaser - This had better be good.

Baque - What idiot holds a staff briefing in the middle of the night?

Senseless - Someone with a lot more time on his hands than us.

Righteous jumps in through the back door of the room.

Righteous - Good morning, everyone!

Genocide - It’s not going to be a very good morning for you, pal.

Righteous - I bet you are all wondering why you’re all here at his lovely time of day.

Tener - The question did occur, yes.

Righteous - First, you can’t deny that it’s really fun to get up late and go look at the stars. Look at the number of them you can see!

They look out the windows and see the same number of stars they always see.

Bios - Is it my imagination, or is he getting dumber?

Puker - Want me to declare him unfit for duty?

Stoner - That would be logical.

Center - Sir, as much as I don’t mind it when you do things like this and in fact I think it’s a great idea, what’s the real reason we’re here?

Righteous’ mood suddenly turns somber and he looks slowly around the room.

Righteous - Computer, deactivate all power to surveillance on deck 1. Lock the doors to the briefing room.

Senseless - Okay, this is weird.

Greaser - What’s going on?

Righteous - Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going on a treasure hunt.

Opening credits. It’s back to using the USS Celestial.

Scene 2 - Still in the briefing room.

Senseless - What? Treasure? We’re not pirates, you know.

Righteous - I know. It came to me in a dream...

Genocide - I hope you also foresaw your own death.

Righteous - The Prophets sent me a vision.

Baque - Again with the Prophets...

Righteous - Remember a few weeks ago when those weird zombies took over the ship?

Senseless - Who could forget.

Tener - What?

Righteous - And do you all remember that when they left, for no apparent reason, they took the ship’s treasury with them?

Senseless - I don’t like where this is going.

Righteous - That’s 100 bars of gold pressed latinum that we now don’t have to our names. We’re going to go get it back.

Puker - Yep, he’s officially gone nuts.

Genocide - As much as I love a good battle, aren’t we being a little insane by deliberately seeking out a force that tried to assimilate half our crew?

Senseless - Sir, it’s suicide!

Genocide - I had a cousin named Suicide. Emphasis on had.

Righteous - Look, the Prophets sent me a vision of us getting a whack of latinum from an impossible source. I don’t intend to let them down by sitting on my ass for a whole episode. That’s almost a week, you know.

Stoner - Didn’t Starfleet give us another latinum stash when we got the new Celestial?

Righteous - They did. If we get back those 100 bars from the zombies, we can spend it all.

The crew sit up straight and start paying attention.

Bios - ...We’re listening.

Tener - That’s ten bars each. Wow...

Senseless - Where do we start looking? That zombie ship could be anywhere.

Greaser - You’d think it would head somewhere that it could convert more people. Somewhere where there’s little resistance. Somewhere like a prison.

Genocide - Obviously not anywhere in the Federation then. Our prisons have spas and swim-up bars in the pools.

Senseless - Where’s the nearest large prison complex.

Baque - We can be to the dilithium mines of Rura Penthe in less than two days at warp 9.

Righteous - Make it so. Genocide, I want ways to disable that ship. You and Tener work on them. Greaser, better warp capability. I don’t know what that means but get on it. Everyone else, just sit tight and make up your wish lists. Dismissed.

The all get up and head for the doors, which don’t open.

Righteous - Oh yeah, hehe... Computer, unlock the doors.

Nothing happens.

Righteous - Computer?

Bios - When you said “deactivate all surveillance equipment on deck 1,” did that include the computer’s microphones?

Righteous - Okay, this could be a problem...

Scene 3 - Sickbay. Lieutenant Bios and Dr. Puker are standing over a console, examining the scans they took of one of the zombie corpses recovered after the initial raid on the first Celestial.

Bios - Does Lieutenant Tener know these are the same mutants that attacked us in the first place?

Puker - Oh probably not, but let’s not tell him. That way, it’ll be funnier when he finds out.

Bios - Ah huh... Do you see this? Is it some kind of virus?

Puker - Not one I’ve ever seen. It’s got more DNA fluctuations than an 8472 on crack.

Bios - Could that be responsible for the zombie-like behaviour?

Puker - Maybe. It is possible that the virus would exterminate the life of its host, then proceed to take over the cerebral cortex, absorbing oxygen or whatever it breathes directly through the disintegrating epidermis, and subsequently supplying the muscles with the substances they need to operate.

Bios - In English?

Puker - It is capable of raising the dead.

Bios - That’s a bad thing.

Puker - Yeah.

Stoner enters the room.

Stoner - I doubt we can come up with a vaccine for the virus. Anyone that is bitten will be infected.

Bios - Why don’t we just wear helmets?

Stoner - That would hardly stop them from biting us.

Bios - I thought the only way you could become infected is through a bite into the brain?

Puker - Such damage speeds up the mutation, but it isn’t the only way.

Bios - Stupid rules. I say we just whip in with phaser rifles set on full power.

Stoner - That could work.

Bios - So you are sure there’s no way to stop the infection once it has entered the body?

Puker - None that I’m motivated enough to figure out. Being a doctor is hard work, Lieutenant, I’d like to see you try it some time.

Bios - Great, the commander is going to have a fit. Just think doc, our chances of getting all the latinum back would be greatly increased if we had a vaccine for the virus.

Bios leaves the room.

Puker - Nurse, get me a medical tricorder, a pot of coffee, and every bloody sample we have of that virus.

Scene 4 - Mess hall. Early morning hours. Baque and Greaser walk up to a replicator.

Baque - This time I’ll buy. We’re getting something a little more basic. Computer, two cups of very hot coffee.

Computer - Unable to comply. Caffeine patterns are only available through a registered copy of CelestOS 2.0.

Greaser starts shaking the replicator as hard as she can.

Greaser - WHATDOYA MEAN THERE’S NO CAFFEINE!!!???!!!

Senseless walks in, sees Lieutenant-Commander Greaser smacking the replicator console as hard as she can, and walks right back out.

Greaser - It’s going to be one of those days again.

Baque - One of what kind of days?

Greaser - The kind of day where the doc is up to his ears in casualties.

In another part of the room, Bios and Tener and Genocide are watching two no-names play some weird game with a 3D holographic display and hand controls.

Genocide - I don’t see the point of this game. Nothing blows up, no one dies, and it doesn’t involve shooting.

Bios - I bet I could hack that game and figure out some cheats... and maybe make some mods that allow for explosions. Making them non-real might be tricky though.

Tener - You guys are missing the point here! It’s tonnes of fun! It’s fun because it doesn’t involve guns or tunneling subroutines!

No-Name #1 - Ha ha ha! Take that! And that! And this thing over here!

No-Name #2 - Err... In case you haven’t realized, I’m winning.

No-Name #1 - That’s what you think!

Genocide - This is boring. We need to spruce it up a little.

Genocide pulls out a phaser and sets it to full power.

Genocide - Okay boys, loser dies.

No-Name #1 and 2 - (gulp)!

They start playing like they never played before, seriously sweating and panting like they are running a marathon.

Beep! Beep! Beep!

Tener - A tie. Wow.

Bios - They both win! This sucks!

Genocide - On the other hand, they both lost too.

He then kills No-Name’s #1 and #2.

Genocide - Now that’s what I call... I can’t think of what I call it, but when it comes to me I’ll tell you.

He sets his phaser on overload and tosses it over his shoulder, where it lands on a table surrounded by four crewmen.

Genocide - All this killing has made me want to kill something. I’m going to the holodeck.

He leaves, and the table with the four no-names explodes.

Scene 5 - A couple days later on the Bridge. Baque, Center, Senseless, Righteous, Genocide, and Bios are present.

Baque - Well, we’re finally here. Rura Penthe off the port bow.

Senseless - Take us into orbit. Go to yellow alert.

Center - Did anyone ask the Klingons for permission to do some scans of their mining and prison planet?

Righteous - What the Klingons don’t know won’t hurt them.

Center - We’re being hailed by the planet.

Baque - There goes the neighbourhood.

Senseless - On screen.

Beep!

Klingon #1 - Identify yourself.

Senseless - We are the USS Celestial. We’re here on a mission to recover something that we lost.

Klingon #1 - Identify yourself.

Senseless - ...We just did.

Klingon #1 - Your ship will be fined if you continue to use the parking orbit you are using. Move to a higher orbit or face a minor inconvenience in the form of a small fine.

Righteous - Can we just get our latinum and go?

Klingon #1 - Show more respect or you’ll be paying half that latinum in damages to your ship. Leave orbit now, or die. Have an honourable day.

Beep!

Center - They’ve cut communications with us, sir.

Righteous - Whatever happened to the days when Klingons were as cozy and friendly as kittens?

Baque - The Klingons decided to be mean ever since you came into being.

Righteous - Let’s talk to Chancellor Martok. He owes us a few favours.

Bios - Sir, no he doesn’t.

Righteous - How ‘bout Gowron?

Bios - He’s dead, sir.

Righteous - How come I wasn’t informed?

Bios - You probably were.

Righteous - ...I’m not getting all of my memos!

Senseless - Could we take long range scans of the planet?

Bios - I doubt we’d find what we’re looking for at that low a resolution.

Senseless - Us again. We were wondering if you’ve seen anything strange lately.

The Klingon looks at them funny.

Klingon #1 - Define strange. Three days ago a targ was found in one of the dilithium moving carts, yesterday 47 workers started dancing the macarena for no reason, and haven’t stopped yet, we had a massive outbreak of chicken pox last night, and I can’t find my bat’leth!

Senseless - Well actually, we were wondering–

Righteous (quickly) - A month ago we encountered a broken up old Galaxy-class ship that was filled with radioactive mutant zombie movie extras that tried to take over our ship. With the help of the USS Saratoga, we managed to return to Earth in order to hunt down the zombie leader. An admiral from Starfleet command told us to screw off and wouldn’t give us the non-existent hazard team from Star Trek: Elite Force. We were just about to sign off for the week and run the plot line into the next episode when a no-name from the bridge told us that the zombies had left, and that they had taken our 100 bars of gold pressed latinum from the ship’s treasury, you know, the stuff we use to make trade with new species. Anyway, we need it back so we can all go on spending sprees and get new Bajoran robes and candles. The leftover from my share I’m going to give to flood relief in the Dahar province. My social insurance number is 957329502345-03, and I am 35 years old. I like the Prophets, large snacks, and praying. Bachelorette #1, what would you do if you were in the Bajoran system?

The Klingon and the rest of the bridge crew stare at him for almost a minute.

Klingon #1 - Fine, do what you want, you’re giving me a headache.

Beep! The viewscreen goes back to the star field screensaver.

Center - He has cut communications with us, sir.

Genocide - Gee, thanks for the tidbit, I never would have guessed.

Righteous - Did he say we could look around?

Baque - I say we take all their fuel, dilithium, and antimatter and go joy-riding around the quadrant.

Righteous - All in good time. First, have Lieutenant Tener, Dr. Puker, and Lieutenant Bios form an away team and go away.

She takes a hammer and smashes the control panel. The door opens. They all step into a large elevator.

Bios - Going up...

Tener - We need to go down.

Bios - Right, right, details.

The elevator drops a few kilometres and stops at the top of the lower levels. As they step out they are not prepared for what they find.

(Collective gasp!)

Bios - They’re all zombies!

Tener - Well, forced labourers usually are, but still...

Puker - Ah, I knew I’d be up to my knees in the dead today, but I didn’t think it would be like this!

For laying before them is a large cavern, walls lined with dilithium ore, and being feverishly worked upon by none other than the radioactive mutant zombie no-names from that planet near Cardassia!

Bios - Holy Pentium 5’s, Doctor!

Puker - Okay, maybe the Klingons trained them? All I know is that the tricorder is detecting a mass of latinum through this cloud of radiation.

Tener - Okay, phasers on full power. That’s the only thing that will stop them. That and a round of Turbolax Surprise, but I strongly doubt the Klingon food processors will make that.

They start walking through the weird reddish mist as the zombies look up at them and make dumb noises.

Tener - Doctor, did you bring any anti-radiation medication?

Puker - Nah, anti-rad drugs are for wussies. Take the subatomic breakdown of your cellular structure like a man and stop complaining.

Bios - Thankfully my species is impervious to most forms of radiation.

Tener - Really? I didn’t know that.

Bios - Neither did I, but I’m seeing if there’s anything to this mind over matter business.

They end up at the far end of the room, looking at a small wooden door.

Tener - Some security system this is, even the system on the Celestial is in better condition.

They pull open the door, which results in all the zombies stopping work and starting to walk towards them.

Puker - Ah shit!

They run in and slam the door shut. However, it is old and pathetic and the hinges break and it falls with a crash, smacking the remaining no-name in the head and doing severe brain damage. The senior officers look around and see tonnes of latinum in crates before them.

Tener - Dear diary: Jackpot!

Bios - Holy submersible pencils! There’s over 100,000 bars here!

Puker - Away team to Celestial.

Righteous - Celestial here. Did you find the latinum?

Puker - Yeah... in a manner of speaking. Lock on to everything in this room and beam it to cargo bay one.

Righteous - Okey Dokey! Energizing!

Bzzzzzzzzzt! (And in the nick of time too, considering there were three zombies about to enter the room.)

No-Name #4 - So here’s the deal: Any more than 100,000 bars and we keep the excess.

No-Name #5 - Got it.

Clunk!

No-Name #5 - What was that?

No-Name #4 - Don’t know. HEY! IS ANYONE IN HERE?

Clunk, scrape!

No-Name #5 - Sounds like we have a bogey.

No-Name #4 - It’s coming from over there.

The two yellow shirts walk through the rows of crates and round a corner, and see something that makes them go:

No-Name #4 and #5 - AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Scene 9 - Main engineering. Greaser is bitching orders at her subordinates.

Greaser - STAY AT YOUR POST! I DON’T CARE ABOUT GHOSTS IN THE CONSOLE! YOU! GET AWAY FROM THAT! NO, IT’S GOT ANOTHER THOUSAND LIGHT-YEARS LEFT IN IT! I DON’T CARE IF YOU SEE MICRO-FRACTURES IN THE DILITHIUM CRYSTALS, LEAVE THEM IN THERE! HEY, YOU! I TOLD YOU TO GET BACK TO YOUR POST! THERE’S NO SUCH THINGS AS GHOSTS IN INTERSTELLAR SPACE!

No-Name #6 - ZOMBIE!!!

Greaser - There’s also no such thing as – Oh, yeah, there is, isn’t there?

They look to where No-Name #6 is pointing and see two zombified crewmen walking into the room.

Zombies - Urgg!

Greaser - Ah, son of a bitch!

The no-names grab phasers are fight off the zombies (well, they try anyway). Greaser makes an exit through the door on the opposite side of the room.

Scene 10 - Briefing room. Righteous is having a tea party with Center and some Bajoran no-names. All of a sudden the ship shakes, sending all the tea cups and pots crashing and smashing to the floor.

Righteous - Prophets damn it! Every time I have a tea party in a scene I end up being interrupted!

Center - Sir? This is the first time you’ve had a tea party. Ever.

The rest of the senior staff waltz into the briefing room.

Genocide - Out of our seats!

Genocide takes his phaser and vaporizes all the no-names. The rest of the senior staff take their seats.

Senseless - We probably shouldn’t be having this meeting here, but it costs too much to make extra scenes so we just decided to have our meeting here instead of at our battle stations. First of all, what’s our heading?

Baque - I’m taking us all to Ferenginar for a shopping spree!

Genocide - Alright! New weapons!

Bios - Alright! New computer junk!

Greaser - Alright! New hair care products!

Senseless slaps himself in the forehead.

Righteous - So what was that shaking that ruined my tea party?

Tener - IT’S THE ATTACK OF THE RADIOACTIVE MUTANT ZOMBIE NO-NAMES FROM A PLANET CALLED RURA PENTHE!!! *(gasps for air)*

Righteous - AHHH!

Righteous throws himself into the air and lands with a thud between his chair and the table.

Senseless - We’re getting reports that a zombie may have stowed away on the transporter beam and may be running amok through the ship, converting every no-name he finds.

Puker (turns to the camera) - Because we all know that the yellow shirts of the TNG era can’t protect themselves worth shit.

Righteous - AHHH!

The idiot captain tried to sit up really fast and bangs his head on the bottom of the table.

Senseless - Genocide, Tener, I want you to seal off every deck below deck 13 with self-powered force fields, automatic phaser turrets, and quick-fix bulkheads. Then, Ensign Center, use the transporters to lock on to anything that has the viral pattern that Dr. Puker and Ensign Stoner found and beam it into space. Far into space, not off the port bow. Baque, start learning some new evasive and attack patterns so when we come up against that zombie ship we’re ready. Bios, start scanning the area for anything we can use to our advantage. Okay, who am I forgetting?

Center - The zombie ship will be in weapons range in three minutes, sir.

Senseless - Okay sir, what’s your plan?

Righteous - It’s so brilliant it confused even myself.

Genocide - Okay, it sucks then.

Righteous - Here’s the deal: While hiding behind this asteroid here, we will fire a probe modified to emit a Starfleet warp signature (the Celestial’s) to get the zombies’ attention. As they turn to intercept it, we will arc the probe back toward the nebula here. Once the zombie ship is inside, we will fire phasers at the mirror I had placed on that moon over there. It will reflect off the moon and hit the zombie ship squarely in the bow. They will naturally increase power to their forward shields and drop power to their aft shields. When they increase speed to intercept the mirror on the moon, thinking we are nearby, we will move out from behind the asteroid, sweep in behind them, and fire a tricobalt torpedo directly into their vulnerable stardrive section. This will be followed by four quantum torpedos fired directly into their warp nacelles. This barrage combined with our phasers targeting their aft torpedo launchers, should disable them quickly. We can then use the anti-virus medicine thingy that the doctor made up which is sitting on a transporter pad in transporter room 2. The virus will eliminate all the zombies on the zombie ship and then we can go on our merry way to Ferenginar to buy religious stuff. Mr. Center, launch probe.

Center - AYE AYE, SIR! Probe launched! Excellent plan, by the way.

Baque - There’s just three problems with it, Captain.

Righteous - Oh?

Baque - First, the phasers are beams of phased protons, and they won’t reflect off that stupid mirror you put there. Secondly, the doctor hasn’t been able to make an anti-virus. If he had, I doubt we would have had to deal with the zombie problem on our ship in the way we did. And thirdly, you are a complete idiot and any plan you come up with will surely backfire.

Righteous - Oh don’t be silly. See? The zombie ship is following the probe. Mr. Genocide, fire phasers. Full power.

Genocide - Gotcha.

The Celestial fires its forward phasers at the mirror on the moon. However, seeing as it’s not light, the mirror vaporises and the phasers drill into the unstable mantle of the moon.

Bios - Gah! The moon is about to explode! Cease fire! Cease fire!

Center - Too late!

Boom, ship rocks, sparks!

Bios - The explosion has ignited some weird explosive gas in the nebula! SHE’S GONNA BLOWWWW!

Senseless - Toc, get us out of here! Warp 1!

Righteous - Prophets damn it!

The Celestial jumps to warp a little too late and the shockwave hits them, knocking them all out in a fade of white.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the nebula, the USS Saratoga is leading a task-force that is about to cross into Breen space. On the Saratoga’s bridge...

Senseless - Hail HQ. I sure as hell hope we don’t end up talking with–

Beep!

Admiral Spot - Now what have you idiots done?

Senseless - Blew up a nebula and decimated a small task force under the command of the Saratoga.

Spot - Figures. I assume you damaged yourself as well? You usually do.

Righteous - Oh yes, but don’t worry. We recently came across a large sum of latinum which we intent to put toward repairs.

Baque - Well, that should leave us still with more than enough.

Spot - Latinum? Where did you get latinum?

Righteous - We went looking for our missing stash and found over 100,000 bars in the hands of the radioactive mutant zombie no-names from a planet near Cardassia!

Spot - Really...?

Righteous - Yeah, great isn’t it?

Spot - Report to Starbase 146 as soon as you fix your engines. Your riches will be put toward fixing the ships you broke. By the way, I hope you at least accomplished something useful today.

Senseless - We managed to neutralize the zombie threat. We shouldn’t hear from them for a while.

Spot - Good. Now, I still can’t figure out why your ship was not given any orders this week in the first place, but make no mistake, it won’t happen again as long as I have a say in it. Now, get to Starbase 146, and step on it! Morons...

Beep! The LCD projector explodes.

Puker, Stoner, and Greaser walk onto the bridge just in time to get in some final words in this episode.

Puker - So... let me guess... we lost all our latinum didn’t we?

Righteous - I blame the Pah-Wraiths.

Baque - I blame you.

Genocide - So that means no new weapons.

Bios - No new computer junk...

Greaser - No new hair care products. Oh well, no loss there, ha ha.

Senseless - Somehow, I doubt we’ve seen the last of these stupid, smelly, annoying, no good, literally rotten, half-brained, idiotic, zombie like radioactive scum buckets from that waste pool we call Cardassia Prime.

Center - I’m sure gonna miss all that money.

Stoner - Yes, I believe it would be logical to at this time blurt out: DAMN IT! GOD DAMN IT!